I was going to write about slaughtering roosters and moving Flower and her lamb to the pasture with the rest of the girls, but instead I find myself needing to write about what is happening in our Battle with Plattsburgh.

Misinformed, it’s what the people that oppose our farm are and no matter what we say they refuse to let go of their preconceived notions. 

This is what they think we want to do.

When what we were planning on doing is actually this.

Mismanaged, is the town in which we currently reside. It is one thing to let a group of well informed concerned citizens sway your decisions, but it’s wrong to cave to a bunch of misinformed, ignorant people that are incapable of minding their own business. Because of the “outcry” that the ignorant masses have raised the town is insisting that we get a drainage study done on the property. This study, plus the engineering we would have to have done could cost up to $10,000! If we had that type of money lying around we would have packed up and left this hole a long time ago. 

Also the town’s planning guidelines are completely unreasonable for someone like us or other small businesses to comply with. We have scrapped our plans for our farm but even to just keep the animals we have now we would need to go through the whole planning process. If you want to see for yourself how intensive the process is here is a link to the application. (Application for Site Plan Approval)

The reason we have to go through this is that according to zoning guidelines anyone that lives on a residentially zoned parcel can use it for agriculture activities, but only if they have a minimum of 7 acres and an approved site plan. That’s right if you want to have a few hens in a residential area of the Town of Plattsburgh you need 7 acres and a site plan (I don't think they really enforce this though). What makes this whole situation more absurd is the fact that the property on the back side of ours is agricultural! Part of our parcel (a small part mind you) is even IN the ag district!

And all of this leads to me being seriously Miffed!!!!! We now have to either find a place to keep our animals or sell them! I am not a happy person to be around right now. We have a piece of land we are trying to buy in Chautauqua County in western NY, but we first need to sell our house and that takes time, time I’m not sure the town is going to give us. We haven’t received any notifications to remove our animals yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of days until we do.

If you’re as miffed as me let the Town of Plattsburgh know, it can’t hurt and maybe, just maybe, it will help.

Town of Plattsburgh
151 Banker Road
Plattsburgh, NY 12901-7307

Phone: (518) 562-6800
Fax: (518) 563-8136

Philip E. Von Bargen
Planning Department Head
philv@townofplattsburgh.org

Allen Reece
Code Enforcement Officer
(518) 562-6842
allenr@townofplattsburgh.org